Moshe Feiglin on Arutz 7: The Right Must Stop Enabling The Left’s Ideology

Translated excerpts from an interview with Moshe Feiglin on Arutz 7, 21 Tevet 5778/Jan. 8, ‘18

Shalom Moshe Feiglin. You published an article on Friday in which you attacked Netanyahu and the entire Right.
Actually, what we are experiencing here is the Right’s inability to mount any type of vision, any type of alternative message to the Left’s. It is not just Netanyahu. It is all the rightist parties over all the generations. The Right has never said what it wants. It has only said what it is not. The Right is always busy fighting the Left. If there would be no Left, there would be no Right. Without the Left, the Right would not know how to define itself.

Just last week, the Likud Central Committee made a very important declaration of intent to declare Israeli sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. This was a statement. Perhaps not a statement that can be put into practice, but it is a statement.

Yes, I remember how in 2002, I was new in the Likud, I wasn’t even yet a member of the Likud Central Committee. The Likud Central Committee, with Sharon as Chairman of the Likud, voted unanimously against a Palestinian state and any division of the Land of Israel. The most inspiring leader of the evening, who convinced the crowd to vote against Sharon, was Binyamin Netanyahu. The same Binyamin Netanyahu who, a few years later, made the Bar-Ilan speech in favor of two states. The same Binyamin Netanyahu who, together with Sharon, voted in favor of the Expulsion from Gaza. Nobody argues that the Right’s heart is not in the right place. Clearly, Netanyahu is not happy about surrendering parts of our Homeland. But because these hearts’ desires were never – never – translated into any practical ideology – not in the Likud, not in the Jewish Home, not with Lieberman, not in any place – the end result is that the Right always drifts into implementing the policies of the Left.

Our Sages say that it is not the mouse who steals, but the hole, which enables him to do so. The mouse in this analogy is the Left. The Left wants to steal the cheese, or in this case, to destroy Jewish towns in the Land of Israel. That is its role. That’s why it is a mouse. But the mouse is not the thief. It is the Right that steals. The Right has always been in the role of the hole. It is the enabler that beckons the thief. Ultimately, it is almost always the Right that destroys Jewish towns and surrenders parts of the Land of Israel. Our Sages were right. It is not the mouse that steals – it is the hole.

Do you see the surrender of parts of the Land of Israel or Jewish towns as a current threat? Even Labor’s Avi Gabai is breaking to the Right to get more votes.

The time has come for us to learn from our lengthy experience. We all remember how we rejoiced when Begin was elected in ’82 and then we got the retreat from Sinai. We remember how we rejoiced when Sharon was elected and then we got Gush Katif. Ultimately, where there is a mouse and a hole, the mouse will always find the way to enter the hole. The guilty party is the hole, not the mouse. If you insist on being an enabler – not creating an alternative, not creating a message, not creating direction, to continue speaking in terms of Oslo, to continue in a never-ending rear-guard war – and you think that in this way you will be able to prevent the mouse from stealing the cheese, then it doesn’t matter how big you are, and how many times you win the elections, and that most of the public is moving to the Right – if you are a hole, the mouse will enter.

Perhaps we should be conducting the rear-guard war against the nations of the world, who vote against Israel in the UN oppose settlement activity.

The mouse is all those forces that are trying to prevent the continued redemption of the Nation of Israel, its return to itself and its Land, its growth, progress, etc. Clearly, the nations of the world are also part of that mouse, as is the Left.

There are two sides here. The problem is that one side does not formulate any direction for itself. It is afraid of its own message, and that is not only the problem of the Right, but of Zionism as a whole. Zionism is attempting to be just a regular nation and to flee its message.

Netanyahu is not the problem. He is the face of the problem. Why did he remove the metal detectors from the entrances to the Temple Mount? Didn’t he have the legitimacy from the world after the Arabs murdered two of our police officers with weapons that they smuggled into the Temple Mount via those entrances? Nobody pressured him and he would have had no problem explaining why metal detectors were necessary on the Temple Mount.

Netanyahu removed the metal detectors from the Temple Mount because the Arabs told him that they would not go to the Temple Mount if there would be metal detectors there. In other words, the Mount will be in your hands. What will you do with it? What will you do with the Temple Mount? 

Netanyahu is afraid of the message of the Temple Mount. He is afraid of Jerusalem, just as Dayan was afraid in 1967, just as Ben Gurion, who in the War of Independence had already captured Jerusalem – was afraid of Jerusalem. Zionism is afraid of its message. It is afraid of Jerusalem, of the Temple Mount and of the Land of Israel.

This is a deep issue. Ultimately, the Right, which does not deal with it, leaves the hole for the mouse, which will always enter. The Right’s academics, who try to tell us that Netanyahu is simply sacrificing pawns here and there on the Temple Mount or the Marmara and that he has some great strategy that we cannot perceive, are ludicrous. It is simply an attempt to cover up the fact that there is no strategy and there can be no strategy. When you do not have identity, when you do not have purpose and you are constantly preoccupied with survival – you end up protecting yourself against accusations of corruption for receiving too many cigars.

The time has come for all those who are connected to the purpose of our national existence here in Israel to understand that we must create a meaningful ideological alternative to the Left. Zehut’s platform does just that. There is nothing else like it in the political system. Everything is ready. We just have to understand that the problem is not the Left. The problem is the Right. We have to close up the hole.